Prakash Per­sad

To the es­tab­lish­ment, re­form­ers, so­cial or oth­er­wise, are on­ly good and praise­wor­thy when they are dead and gone. It takes an enor­mous amount of courage, self-be­lief and ca­pac­i­ty to ab­sorb the pun­ish­ment met­ed out and still stay on the path for change.

Ir­re­spec­tive of the field, the at­ti­tude to change by those hold­ing the reins of of­fi­cial­dom is amaz­ing­ly con­sis­tent. It is not sur­pris­ing then that "herd-dom" is be­com­ing the pre­ferred king­dom by both the fol­low­ing-dumb and the lead­ing-dumb. In this era of bow­ing be­fore the fash­ion­able al­tar of the newest buzz­word, change it­self is sub­ject­ed to the chang­ing de­f­i­n­i­tion of change.

To change with­out chang­ing and yet ap­pear­ing to change is the new lead­er­ship par­a­digm, it would ap­pear. No won­der peo­ple say the more things change the more they re­main the same.

So why is change so dif­fi­cult to achieve? There is a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy to re­sist change. This in­er­tial force is an in­trin­sic prop­er­ty of mass and or­gan­i­sa­tions and it tends to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er in or­gan­i­sa­tions and so­ci­eties where norms, rules and reg­u­la­tions and the ben­e­fits of the sta­tus quo are ma­jor con­trib­u­tors to it.

The oth­er and more sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor is that the change move­ment is in­vari­ably sus­cep­ti­ble to hi­jack­ing by the agents of the sta­tus quo. To il­lus­trate the is­sue, a large com­pa­ny would be used as an ex­am­ple. No one can change what they nei­ther know nor un­der­stand; they may de­stroy it, yes; change it for the bet­ter, no. This pos­es the first big chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly for ex­ter­nal and/or new lead­er­ship. It would ap­pear that in­vari­ably they have to re­ly on ex­ist­ing com­pa­ny per­son­nel.

This pro­vides the first op­por­tu­ni­ty for sab­o­tage and hi­jack and that is the in­evitable ini­tial re­sult. This sit­u­a­tion is fur­ther ag­gra­vat­ed, iron­ic as it seems, by those who want to bring about change as they them­selves are gen­er­al­ly high­ly in­tol­er­ant of change agents.

They pre­fer pli­ant devo­tees and there­fore al­most au­to­mat­i­cal­ly choose peo­ple who de­fer and sup­pli­cate to them. This en­sures that it would be im­pos­si­ble to ob­tain a true pic­ture of the sit­u­a­tion and con­se­quent­ly de­rails the ref­or­ma­tion process.

Peo­ple who ini­tial­ly clam­oured for chang­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture end up not chang­ing it but rather chang­ing them­selves to be­come ex­act­ly what they want­ed to change when they be­come se­duced with the ben­e­fits and perks of re­tain­ing the sta­tus quo.

On­ly the re­al­ly strong, com­mit­ted and com­pe­tent can ef­fect or­gan­i­sa­tion­al change. This is why, de­spite decades of preach­ing changes, the sit­u­a­tion re­mains the same or re­gress­es. We have been hear­ing about the com­put­er­i­sa­tion of the Li­cens­ing De­part­ment for decades now. Why has it not been done? Clear­ly there is a ben­e­fit to some to en­sure that it is not easy to check up on ac­tiv­i­ties and trans­ac­tions there. Can any­one tru­ly say how many ve­hi­cles there are in T&T?

The prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­pair of pipelines and the dig­ging up and sub­se­quent late and poor re­pair of af­fect­ed road­ways has been with us, it would seem, for­ev­er. Yet no one has been able to over­come this un­ac­cept­able prac­tice. Un­less, as cit­i­zens, we are pre­pared to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo, to in­sist on bring­ing about gen­uine change, the na­tion and its cit­i­zens would not ful­fil their true po­ten­tial.

The chal­lenge be­ing pro­posed in not ad hoc or po­lit­i­cal­ly-in­spired spo­radic protests but a gen­uine cul­tur­al change; one in which peo­ple at both the in­di­vid­ual and com­mu­ni­ty lev­els are pre­pared to stand up and be count­ed.

So­cial ac­tivism, es­pe­cial­ly among the ed­u­cat­ed, is un­ac­cept­ably low and it would ap­pear that among them so­cial con­science is dead or dor­mant. The pur­pose of ed­u­ca­tion is not and can­not be con­fined to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. That is an im­por­tant as­pect but the more im­por­tant one is that of crit­i­cal think­ing, en­gag­ing in healthy scep­ti­cism and al­ways ask­ing how and why.

In an era when in­no­va­tion is ac­knowl­edged as a crit­i­cal as­pect for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, the mind­set to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo, not for de­struc­tive pur­pos­es or mere­ly for the sake of chal­lenge but to bring­ing about pos­i­tive and con­struc­tive change, must be at the core of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem at all lev­els and must be fos­tered in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

Chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo is es­sen­tial to our sur­vival and fu­ture.

• Prakash Per­sad is the di­rec­tor of Swa­ha Inc